HELP ME FILL THE LEAGUE WITH PLAYERS

Hey y'all!

The year is 2024. I (me) am extremely annoyed about the Houston Astros 2024 Opening Series against the New York Yankees. In their four matchups, the Astros would leave 34 men on-base, and the team went 8-for-41 with runners in scoring position. Their first game was especially egregious, as the Astros out-hit the Yankees 13-8 but fell by a single run. Why would we ever accept a sport that fails to reward players for doing things? Why would we sit in utter frustration and mundanity when opportunity for reward is vital for both viewer and participant? What the f--k is baseball designed to do, even?

This inspired me to create a new scoring format for baseball. The rules are as follows:
If you get to first, you get a point.
If you get to second, you get another point.
If you get to third, you get another point.
If you return home, you receive 3 more points, exiting the field with 6 total points.

The new scoring system was meant to alleviate my woes as an Astros fan but immediately became a restructuring of how I would view the game.

The year is 2024, the month is July. In the aftermath of Hurricane Beryl, I was stranded in the small town of Livingston, Texas without power. All that was available to me was a book I'd brought on happenstance, Johnny Came Sliding Home by William J. Ryczek, and so I learned of baseball's early chronicles. Amidst the tales of men slowly morphing from distinguished ideologues to hellbent profiteers, I was struck by a passage about the 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings, the sport's first openly professional team.

"In the 1880s, when [Harry] Wright served as manager for the Philadelphia club of the National League, one of his players, Ed Andrew, scored a key run by cutting 20 feet inside the third base bag. Whenever the lone umpire's attention was elsewhere, this was the accepted technique and considered quite clever by most".

What an opportunity provided by the early sport's gentlemanly conduct this provided, only to be stripped away by the evermore pressing matters of finance and regimentation in the sport. After a few days of pondering, this passage and my previous inquiry on the scoring issue led me to this. Welcome to Coro.

Here are the rules, broken into sections:

Field Information:
a. The field contains 4 bases, with zones centered around the three fair bases. 
      i. The near zone and home plate are 60 feet apart 
      ii. The center zone and near zone are 60 feet apart
      iii. The far zone and home plate are 120 feet apart
b. The outfield wall is a maximum of 300 feet from home plate.
c. Beyond the 90 degrees of the base alignments, there is an extra 12 yards on each side of the field.
d. The line that is horizontal to and curves around home plate is called the home plate boundary.


Hitting:
a. Anywhere in the field beyond the home plate boundary is fair territory, and anywhere behind the home plate boundary or out of the field of play is foul. This includes home runs.
b. The batter will receive a maximum of 3 pitches. 2 strikes for an out (you can be out on a foul ball) and 2 balls before a free hit.
      i. A free hit is awarded to the batter after two balls. A teammate will lob the ball to the batter from anywhere behind the H. P. B The batter will be out if no fair contact is made.

Baserunning:
a. Once a ball is hit, the batter can either go to the short base (the right-side base) or the long base (left-side base).
b. There are no distinct basepaths, so a runner can go anywhere on the field in attempting to reach the next base.
c. The runner must complete the circuit in order to return home.
      i. Counterclockwise if beginning at the short base
      iI. Clockwise if beginning at the long base


Zone Rules:
a. The zones around the bases are passed through to receive points.
b. To remain safely inside of a zone, the runner must touch the corresponding base without being previously tagged. 
      i. They can exit and re-enter the zone safely without re-tagging the base.
c. A single offensive player is allowed in each zone at any given time.
d. A play is not declared dead until all runners are either out or safely retired within a zone.


Defense:
Base guards
      i. Two per defensive possession
      ii. Allowed to enter zones without a runner already in that zone.
Fielders
      i. The remaining defensive players are designated as fielders
      ii. Allowed to enter a zone only when an offensive player has entered into the zone.
Catcher
      i. Only defensive player allowed behind the home plate boundary.
      ii. Allowed fair-territory positioning on a free hit as a third guard.


Pitching:
Location & Motion
      i. The pitcher must stay beyond the arc for the entirety of their pitching motion, and can move within the 30 degree boundary. 
             1. The strike zone remains above home plate regardless of the pitcher’s location around the arc
      ii. The pitcher must keep one foot on the ground for the duration of the pitch.
      iii. The pitcher is allowed to move inside of the arc only once the ball is hit.
Zone Rules
      i. The pitcher acts as a fielder, unless substituted for a guard, where they retain their guard rules.
      

Scoring:
Points
      i. If a baserunner enters a zone, they are awarded the zone’s point value (see field information), regardless of whether they touch the base.
      ii. Points are NOT cumulative, the runner will retain the highest zone value that they entered. 
Outs
      i. The batter receives two strikes in an at-bat
      ii. The ball is hit and caught before touching the ground
      iii. A runner is tagged outside of a zone OR inside of a zone without having touched the corresponding base.

Format:
The game of Coro will be split into 3 periods, with each team batting in separate turns. A team’s turn ends when either:
      i. 21 batters have faced the defense
      ii. 7 outs are recorded by the defense
The offense’s 21 at-bats will be split evenly amongst the players, with each hitter required to face the pitcher 3 times. The team with the most points at the end of 3 periods is the winner.